Staff profile

• My research examines low-carbon energy transitions through the lens of emerging concepts about people’s ‘affective attachments’. I analyse how social groups form, sustain, and dissolve attachments to fossil-fuelled and energy-intensive ways of life amid a climate crisis, where carbon emissions need to be rapidly reduced.
• I received my PhD from Lancaster University (2021-25), where I analysed the formation of (post-)carbon attachments in West Cumbria, north-west England - a place that has become a hotbed of climate politics in recent years because of controversial plans to build a new coal mine in the area. Using ethnographic and creative methods, I showed how attachments to high-carbon lives (re)form in material cultures wherein fossil fuel industries have the upper hand over renewable industries. Fossil capital can take advantage of these conditions to reproduce high-carbon development trajectories.
• I simultaneously traced the shapeshifting nature of people’s attachments, showing how the promises which people become tethered to change, often at speed, opening opportunities to build sustainable futures. I offer the concept of ‘fluid hope’ to demonstrate people’s capacities to imagine post-carbon futures in the face of adversity.
• I am embarking on new research exploring how, when, and where attachments to unsustainable, energy-intensive forms of life are disrupted. This is in the wider context of the need to significantly reduce societal energy demand to achieve a 'net zero' transition. My project will explore how individuals who are accustomed to energy-rich lifestyles develop new ways of life centred on lower energy use, whilst continuing to feel drawn back into energy-intensive trajectories given the enduring emotional and cultural appeal of energy intensive living.

• 2025 - 2026: Fellow, Economic and Social Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship:
• 2024 - 2024: Winner, Conceptual Contribution, RGS Energy Geographies’ PGR paper competition:
• 2021 - 2025: Economic and Social Research Council Doctoral Funding:
• 2012 - 2013: Cambridge Home and European Scholarship Scheme:

Doctoral Thesis

• The politics of promise in a climate emergency: The case of West Cumbria
  
  Lewis, P. (2025). The politics of promise in a climate emergency: The case of West Cumbria [Thesis]. Lancaster University.

Journal Article

• Fluid hope in a climate emergency: Lessons from an English citizens’ jury
  
  Lewis, P. (2025). Fluid hope in a climate emergency: Lessons from an English citizens’ jury. Environmental Politics. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2025.2522516
• Citizen deliberation in Net Zero governance: learning lessons and looking forward
  
  Ainscough, J., Killeen, L., Lewis, P., Shepherd, A., & Willis, R. (2025). Citizen deliberation in Net Zero governance: learning lessons and looking forward. Journal of the British Academy, 13(1), Article a13. https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/013.a13
• Distrust and reflexive impotence in the net zero transition: findings from a longitudinal deliberative mini-public
  
  Ainscough, J., Lewis, P., & Farrow, L. (2024). Distrust and reflexive impotence in the net zero transition: findings from a longitudinal deliberative mini-public. Climatic Change, 177(11). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-024-03806-2
• Re-attaching to coal in a Climate Emergency: The case of the Whitehaven mine
  
  Lewis, P. (2024). Re-attaching to coal in a Climate Emergency: The case of the Whitehaven mine. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 7(4), 1821-1843. https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486241238663
• The messy politics of local climate assemblies
  
  Lewis, P., Ainscough, J., Coxcoon, R., & Willis, R. (2023). The messy politics of local climate assemblies. Climatic Change, 176(6). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-023-03555-8
• Human Rights Education in Osler and Starkey: From Analytic Framework to Object of Analysis
  
  Lewis, P. (2014). Human Rights Education in Osler and Starkey: From Analytic Framework to Object of Analysis. CORERJ: Cambridge Open-Review Educational Research E-Journal.
• State-effects as state power: Expectation, anxiety and fear in the Inambari valley
  
  Lewis, P. (2012). State-effects as state power: Expectation, anxiety and fear in the Inambari valley. Anthropologica.